


Remember when you'd sing, just for the love of it?

by Wolf2407



Series: that's the kind of love i've been dreaming of [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: (subtly), Angst, Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Crowley as Raphael, Gen, Happy Ending, and hit me with a baseball bat, i started out with only the first part planned, ineffable husbands, then the raphael&uriel brotp broke into my house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 02:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19432378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf2407/pseuds/Wolf2407
Summary: There is one thing that angels, Man and beasts have in common, and it is Song.Raphael, the patron angel of music, misses it dearly.





	Remember when you'd sing, just for the love of it?

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Sing" by Hozier, who is probably the unofficial sponsor of a full 10% of fic titles.
> 
> This came to me a few days ago, and then I wrote it in a six hour marathon from 11pm to 5am. I did try to catch mistakes, but there may be one or two that I missed. I've only watched the show once and my knowledge of patronages is gleaned from some middle-depth googling, so some stuff may be off. Please feel free to let me know.
> 
> (I am also terribly sorry that I couldn't get the footnote links to work.)
> 
> (Also, if you came here from my GOTG work, I am even more sorry, and I do plan to update FPP some time before the next solstice. I've just been... Busy.)

In the Beginning, there was only Her.  
  
She did not want; for wanting would imply that there was something that She did not already have; as there was nothing but Her currently in existence, it was altogether impossible.  
  
For a while- neither long nor short, because Time had not been invented yet- She was content in Her singularity, reveling in Herself. It formed a quaint age, before the complexity of Her Plans snarled the threads of existence into tapestries and knotted horrors.  
  
When She saw fit, and grew bored of being surrounded by a perfect void, She took a piece of Herself, breathing part of Her Grace into it, and yet setting it _apart_ from herself. She whispered a Name into this fragment, the words like a mother’s first song to her child, and willed it to take form.  
  
There was no breath for it to draw, but its eyes opened, and It saw Her; She was, after all, all there was to see. She smiled, at this Thing that would soon realize it was Archangel, and watched as it began moving the various parts of its celestial form, light radiating from it not unlike the stars that would someday Be.  
  
When she was done, they were the Four.  
  
To Helel, the First, the Bringer of Light and the Morningstar, was given dominion over fire and wrath and enlightenment; as First, he had been the very first being to _realize_ anything at all rather than intrinsically _knowing_ it.  
  
To Raphael, She gave a staff, and also the idea to manifest a hand or forty to hold it with. To him also were given the powers of healing, of compassion, the mastery of knowledge and progression and music.   
  
To Gabriel, She gave knowledge of Truth and Revelation, as well as clarity of words and sharpness of speech; She knew that eventually, there would be far too many beings in existence for Her to directly involve Herself with each one, and She did not find the prospect of addressing hundreds a day particularly appealing.  
  
Better to keep herself mysterious. Ineffable.  
  
To Uriel, the youngest and the only that would be addressed in the same way as Herself, she gave a love of beauty and arts, and the ability to see the beauty even in the sciences. To her also were given the storms and their fury; terrible and beautiful, all of which was in her domain.  
  
They were Four and She was One; they were part of her, still close and raw, their souls not entirely cleaved from Her yet. They eventually took forms, guided by Her, of what would, one day, be called Man and Woman. Helel stood tallest, his hair black speckled with gold, his skin intricately patterned with gold as well; his eyes were silver, and glowed if you caught them at the right angle. Raphael had bright red hair, the gold She had decided would be intrinsic to angelic forms confined to his eyes, where it burned with the light of unformed stars. The rest of him was pale, although not overly so, his body drawn out and thinner than his older brother’s. Uriel stood shortest, her skin dark and flecked with gold, her hair short and uniquely curly and the color of the space between the stars-that-would-be and her eyes matching. Gabriel, she shaped with the violet of the most dazzling twilights-that-would-be in his eyes, his hair neat and straight, like charcoal with just a touch of ash mixed in, the gold patterning tucked away across his chest and torso and along the spots where veins would-have-been, all places easily hidden by a robe or shirt. He needed to blend in, after all.  
  
Together, they wove the planets and the stars, sharing their abilities and finding when they shared their powers they could accomplish things far greater than they could alone. She mostly stood apart, directing them but leaving the actual _creation_ to them; the planets she helped with, but the stars she let them have. Raphael delighted in the actual forming of the gasses and cores; the ones Helel touched always burned brighter, Uriel was always leaning around Raphael’s shoulder and constantly talking to him as they sought the best shape and set of colors, and Gabriel helped with arranging their composition and location. It was Her who started those first songs, softly chanting as She was down amongst them shaping worlds, and the Four caught on easily. These were the First Songs, full of Love for each other and for Creation before it was Created, before there were sunrises and atmospheres and moons and tides and anything at all for sound to actually travel through, but that was a minor detail. As the stars fell into place, their movements complemented the First Song, and She thought it was Good.  
  
Once they had light to work with, they set about expanding the Heavenly Host. The lesser angels required less effort on her part, but if she paid particular attention to a select few, [1] the Archangels knew better than to comment.  
  
Eventually, She gathered those that existed to Her, and the first Angelic Music was formed. It was beautiful, in an altogether different way from the magnificence that had been the Quintet, but it pleased Her and it was Good.  
  
(The Seraphim were an afterthought, much later; while they technically outranked the Archangels, it was mostly by the fact that they were physically closer to Her than they were, and all they ever did was chant prayers nonstop because she liked the background noise and was feeling vain that day.)  
  
When the time came to begin forming the animals, it was Uriel who had the idea to share with them the gift of music, as it would eventually be given to Man as well, and wouldn’t it be pleasant for Man to have something that could reflect beauty back at him from nature itself? Gabriel had argued that creation itself was beautiful enough, but She was intrigued, and had allowed a set of experiments. Raphael, ever the type to try anything new, couldn’t keep himself from joining in.  
  
Uriel had taken her latest project- a little creature with wings like angels, but tiny scaly legs, and a pointy beak- and changed it up a bit. ( _There’s going to be lots of different ones,_ she had insisted to Gabriel when he had asked if she was going to pick a model and stick to it.) This one was bigger than some of the others, with a long, pointed beak, webbed feet, and black feathers dappled with white like the stars in the night sky. [2] When prompted, it obligingly gave a call that was three long ascending notes, followed by several more triads; She was pleased, and let Uriel know.  
  
Raphael came next, with his newest creation wrapped around his arm.  
  
“Now, these can’t speak like the other one animals, can they?” She asked.  
  
“No, no,” Raphael said, nearly cooing at the little beast. “Not like the birds can. And not all of them are going to be like this one.”  
  
“So what can this one do?”  
  
“Go on, then,” Raphael murmured, and the snake gave an odd little fast shake to the tip of its tail, which let off a buzzing rattling noise. Its pale yellow eyes were fixed on Raphael with no malevolence to match the display.  
  
“They mostly do it when they’re frightened,” Raphael explained. “Keeps them from getting stepped on, saves the children from getting bit, you know?”  
  
She did, and She thought it was good.  
  
_**_  
  
  
There was no music in Hell.  
  
There are a lot of things you lose when you Fall. Your Grace, a gift from the Almighty Herself, the thing that has formed the core of your being since before you were an independent being, is forcibly ripped out from the core of your soul. As your Grace is what your soul is built _on,_ it collapses in on itself, which really only matches what’s happening to your body. There’s a constant background noise, mentally, in Heaven of all the angels together, being able to sense each other, and you don’t even realize it’s there until you’re ripped out of the hivemind and have your cord cut so you can never feel it again. The Love that came from Her for all of her creations, but especially for her Angels, is ripped away from you as well, leaving you nothing to hold on to as your soul, again, is collapsing in on itself and you lose everything you’ve ever known.  
  
To top it off, there is an actual physical part of Falling that accompanies the whole metaphysical part. You tumble end over end for a half of an eternity, just long enough to start to pull the bleeding shreds of your consciousness together, to realize that you are, in fact, still alive as your flesh halfway phases out of corporality, since it depends on your Grace to hold a form in this non-physical plane and you don’t have that anymore. This does, after all, challenge the assumption of just _what_ holds a supernatural being’s flesh together, but anybody who is Falling can think of much more than how much it hurts as every part of their being gets torn to shreds.  
  
By design, just as you feel like you can maybe start to put together a coherent thought that doesn’t crave your imminent destruction, you enter the lake. It’s a one way trip: something goes in. Something else comes out. You don’t leave anything behind: what you lose is irrevocably destroyed. Early on, some went looking, and never found it. Some others hoped they could be redeemed, and were destroyed by their side for it.  
  
Raphael entered the boiling brimstone, and _something_ crawled out.  
  
He threw himself up on the beach, rolling more than pulling himself out because there was something critically, _critically_ wrong with his arms and legs.  
  
He rolled again.  
  
He couldn’t feel them.  
  
He opened his mouth to scream, and only a raspy hiss came out. He squirmed, trying to get _anything_ in this body to work, and something whipped him in the eyes. He managed to turn his head, look over what had once been a shoulder, and saw black scales, more red ones underneath.  
  
He gave an experimental twitch, and the scales moved too.  
  
“You there! Snake!”  
  
Was that what he was? Was this Her idea of a sick fucking joke? [3] Her revenge on him for daring to question Her?  
  
He opened his mouth to snarl, to curse, to smite, and got a strong, clear hiss for his efforts. His fangs went into his tongue when he closed his mouth.  
  
“Oh, put some effort into it,” the voice spat. It sounded vaguely familiar. “Work for the words.”  
  
He was fucking _trying._ He opened his mouth again.  
  
_“Ssssssssssssshhhh-“_ He turned it into an full threat display as his tail snapped back and forth, stinging his sides as the tip- rattle-less, so he didn’t even have _that-_ hit them, but the light sting was welcome compared to the agony of having his voice stripped, his Grace gone, his identity and personhood turned to less than dust.  
  
He looked around, colors shifting and unfamiliar, eyes piercing the dark.  
  
A woman with a silvery mold covering her face (he would later learn her new name was Dagon, and he would never learn her old name) and wearing an eel for a crown sat perhaps ten feet from him, watching him with disgust. Around, other beasts writhed and screamed, brimstone still burning into their skin.  
  
“Weren’t lucky enough to get something with a voice, huh?” she asked. The answer was plain, so he settled for glaring at her instead, as much as a snake could glare, because they had been designed as a largely nonsocial species with little need to express emotions to peers.  
  
Gabriel had been particularly proud of how much expressiveness he’d given wolves and dogs- [4]  
  
_Gabriel._  
  
He’d never see him again. They’d developed their differences over time, and more often than not Raphael had found him annoying, but once they had been Four, and once they had Sang, and he had known he was Loved.  
  
_I’m never going to see him again._  
  
_“Snake!”_ the eel-woman called out, interrupting him before he could work his way to mourning Uriel. “No, can’t call you that, what if another snake comes out?”  
  
He flared his nostrils, the one form of self-expression left to him, and tried to get away from her, somewhere where he could sort out this form in peace and try to force it to take a different shape.  
  
_“Crawly,”_ she said, as if inspired, with the tone of one who thinks they’ve done something seriously clever but they’re too stupid to see otherwise. He wished he had hair so it could stand on end.  
  
His hair. Long and curly and the color of dark polished copper. That was gone now too. Might be able to do something about that, though.  
  
Crawly was as good as anything, though. Raphael was dead.  
  
  
_**_  
  
Ten million angels and ten million demons, the Host split perfectly in half. The Four had become the Two Above and the Two Below.  
  
He had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that maybe Helel would bring forth a song or two. They were good for motivating troops, after all, and it was good for building unity. God- well- the Powers that Be knew that having your soldiers be unified instead of backstabbing each other tended to just work better.  
  
It would have made it feel a little more like home.  
  
But Helel called himself Satan or Lucifer now, depending on who you were talking to. He preferred Satan, Lucifer being something he had concocted in one of his fits, a rough translation of _morning-star._  
  
He was no longer the Morningstar. That title belonged to Gabriel now, of all people, and Helel- Satan, that was- was the Eveningstar.  
  
And the Eveningstar had no space for music.  
  
  
_**_  
  
  
There were birds in the Garden.  
  
Crawly sat back, coiled on himself, and looked up at them. This was one of the few places where prey animals lacked their fear of predators, all for the joy of the first Man and Woman, and so he could watch them freely.  
  
They sang, sweetly and innocently, unaware of how they were just pawns in a much bigger game, had less thought put into them than the painted background for a stage. They were truly, deeply unimportant. When the humans would write of what happened here for millennia hereafter, none would stop to mourn the birds that fell out of existence the day She let Eden’s walls crumble.  
  
Crawly watched the birds, and missed Uriel so much his heart hurt.  
  
After the sun fell and the birds returned to their little nests, he slithered into the brush and pushed at the edges of his form, reshaping it so that he fell to the ground on four limbs instead of none. Pale, smooth skin, _red hair._ His wings rustled in the brush behind him, and he quickly pulled them in so only one pair showed instead of two.  
  
He'd decided to wear them pitch black. There was no identifying him from a certain somebody else’s wings if they were just a solid, neutral black. Apparently it was his color now, anyway.  
  
The only thing was the snake.  
  
Most of the other demons got around by riding around in their true forms and miracling themselves a humanlike body to go underneath it that they could pilot around. It always came out some sort of corrupted, but it worked.  
  
He'd figured the rule was that you had to express _some_ part of your true self in your two-legged form. But did it _have_ to be the actual, physical thing?  
  
Hadn’t Pestilence gone nattering on once, about how one day humans were going to invent these things called _tattoos_ where they put images on their skin by punching ink through it with a needle, and he had grand plans for spreading diseases through unclean machines?  
  
Weren’t all of their corporations off of the ethereal plane just really elaborate images?  
  
Crawly cracked his neck, focused, and the snake he’d been wearing as a crown disappeared, replaced by a small black tattoo just in front of his right ear. He looked himself over in a puddle, and was largely pleased.  
  
The eyes, he couldn’t do anything about; that was a modification direct from Her, apparently. He’d tried, and the best he could do was forcing the pupils into a round shape if he focused on it particularly hard and opened himself up to a horrific headache if he wasn’t careful.  
  
He nodded to his reflection, fussing with his hair and enjoying the feeling of running his fingers through it, before he let himself fall back into the snake before anyone saw.  
  
If he’d walked back into Hell with his second set of wings out, or if he’d ever made the effort to get close to He- _Satan,_ he would’ve been accorded a place of respect at his side, of course. He would have been welcomed as a _brother_ and probably been held equal to the Lord of the Flies, if not slightly superior.  
  
Beelzebub simply hadn’t been an Archangel, after all, and there were certain Things you were Owed when you had been One of the Four. (He wondered sometimes who was whose replacement; had Michael filled in for Raphael or Helel? He liked to think she was his replacement, as the prospect of being replaced by _Sandalphon_ was enough to make him want to dive back into the boiling brimstone and hunt for a shred of grace to use to regain his dignity.)  
  
But that meant having to refer to Satan as _brother_ and at least _pretending_ to accept and encourage him, and that he could not do.  
  
  
_**_  
  
  
Changing your name is quite a casual thing in Hell, really.  
  
To start off, it had been generally accepted that once you Fell, you just had to change your name. It was One Of Those Things. So all of them had already done it once, and some of them, like Crawly, hadn’t even chosen theirs in the first place, so they were basically entitled to changing it as they pleased. They all were. The whole thing about Hell was that you had rebelled against the rules Upstairs, so they had different rules Downstairs.  
  
_“Crowley,”_ he tells Aziraphale. It’s just a little bit more dignified. A little more melodious. Just a hairsbreadth closer to the way it had sounded when She had called his Name.  
  
Better than _Crawly,_ at least. Crowley was hard to say harshly even for Beelzebub.  
  
  
_**_  
  
  
If Raphael had been around, the phonograph would have been invented in the 1700s, if not earlier.  
  
As it is, he isn’t, so it’s invented in 1887 by Thomas Edison, and Crowley excuses it by explaining that giving Edison the money earlier on gave him more time to focus on working out the math that the atom bomb will, eventually, be built on.  
  
_(to her was given the knowledge to see the beauty in the sciences, the loveliness of the storm- more than six thousand years now and he still missed his sister-)_  
  
He wondered, one night, how involved Gabriel was in wartime communications, if Uriel had been delighted or horrified by the bombs.  
  
He reminded himself he’d never find out, and immediately drank enough alcohol to kill a horse.  
  
  
_**_  
  
  
Car radios are even better than phonographs, and he didn’t even have anything to do with them.  
  
Crowley, however, does not sing along with it, as most humans are wont to do, except occasionally rising to mouthing or whispering words under his breath. He hadn’t actually, properly sang in about six thousand years.  
  
He had tried once, in Eden, when he’d had privacy to figure out his humanoid form. Trying to sing an angelic song without the infinitely layered voice of an angel didn’t work well, to say the least, not to mention it felt like swallowing molten steel. Any other song next to that, really, would just pale in comparison, and trying just reminded him of... well, when they had been Four and One, when he had known love as surely as he knew himself.  
  
The official rule goes that demons firstly can’t love, which snowballs into demons don’t appreciate art and demons don’t sing and demons don’t have emotions at all, which is sort of self-contradictory, isn’t it, because if they didn’t have emotions, why would they ever seek a second war in Heaven? Did anybody think that one through?  
  
He tries to keep a low profile, he really does, so he toes the party line. It does not say that demons cannot _grieve,_ so he allows himself that much, on his worst nights where he either nearly discorporates from alcohol poisoning or sleeps for more than a year.  
  
  
_**_  
  
  
After the Abotchalypse, when the low profiles are just completely fucking blown all the way to Andromeda and they’re standing on the tarmac at Tadfield (he wishes he could have seen Uriel’s face when the humans figured out flight) and Satan’s just tucked himself back into Hell, Crowley stands like a deer in spotlights.  
  
_Did he See? Did he figure it out? Did he Know?_  
  
_(“They say the Archangel Raphael’s back,” Aziraphale had said once during one of the plagues. “He’s been performing healing miracles across the continent. Nobody knows where he’s been or where he is. They said they thought he turned his back on Heaven after the War and spent all this time out in the stars!”  
  
That would have been a good idea, Crowley thought as he made a show of acting more drunk than he was. A really, spectacularly good idea. “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him.”  
  
“How could you not?” Aziraphale cried out. “I felt something happen, and I was in the next country over!”  
  
Crowley had shrugged and made a noncommittal noise, and the miracles had stopped that day.)_  
  
Had any of them figured it out? Or had they actually, honestly thought he’d just fucked off into the cosmos with nary a peep except a week’s worth of miracles in the south of France? Seriously?  
  
_How can anyone as clever as you be so stupid?_  
  
He looked at the spot Gabriel had disappeared from, and felt weak in the legs. That may have also been because he was stretched a bit thin from _forming a pocket universe that Satan Himself couldn’t claw his way into,_ or that he was just worse than usual at remembering that he was supposed to have a pelvis for bipedalism (he very rarely remembered to actually attach it to his spine, which explained a great deal about his gait).  
  
Either way, he was rather numb as the crowd at the base dispersed, making mumbled agreements to Aziraphale’s expressions of... gratitude? Farewell? Who knew? with the little piece of metal from the Bentley still in his hand.  
  
Right. The Bentley. He didn’t really fancy walking back to London like this-  
  
“Crowley, dear,” Aziraphale murmurs, nudging him.  
  
He hums in response.  
  
“They’re offering us a ride home,” he explained, gesturing at Newt and Anathema. “Or the nearest bus stop, more like.”  
  
Crowley nods slowly. “On something more substantial than the gearless bike?”  
  
“I have a car,” Newt says in a way that would be expected from someone who had to go through life with the name Newt. “It’ll be a bit tight, but you two can probably fit in the back. Backseat, I mean.”  
  
Crowley nods again, is unsure if he ever stopped. His bones feel loosely attached, like his body is _very_ keen to give way and slip into another skin. He shakes himself slightly, putting his hands into his pockets and digging his nails into his palms.  
  
Aziraphale puts a hand on his elbow, just the lightest of touches, and it helps ground him.  
  
  
_**_  
  
  
Later, once they body-swap and head back to their respective dens to keep up appearances, Crowley stands in the mirror in Aziraphale’s bathroom and summons his (Aziraphale’s) wings.  
  
He had been curious, frankly, to see what happened when you took the soul of an archangel-turned-demon and shoved it inside that of a Principality.  
  
Two wings, and just two, burst forth, white as snow. He stands there, longer than he’d ever admit, leaning on the sink and looking. He’d also never admit that when they’d swapped, he’d grabbed at the faintest wisps of Grace clinging to Aziraphale’s vessel like a starving man grabs food.  
  
In Mayfair, Aziraphale does the same wing experiment, except he gets four wings instead of two that flicker out from black since he doesn’t know yet that he has to glamour them that way. The bottom pair are white, and the top are white again but edged with ruby and turquoise, and he understands the terrible truth.  
  
  
_**_  
  
  
She’s there, in Heaven, when he goes to fulfill Aziraphale’s rather forced execution summons. She doesn’t recognize him. Neither does Gabriel, or anyone else.  
  
He looks at her as much as he dares. She looks the same, except she’s swapped her robe for a clean, off-white suit that Aziraphale probably would have liked. She’s playing the perfect soldier, posture impeccable, and when he meets her eyes she doesn’t meet his.  
  
Gabriel, Gabriel’s a bigger dick than ever, really, and Crowley is equal parts indignant (at his mistreatment) shamed (he hadn’t been like that, surely?) and sorrowful (had _he_ caused this?).  
  
He can sense them, though, the shape of their souls. Gabriel’s really just followed the logical conclusion of the stuck-up personality he had since he was made, and now that he’s taken the role as Eldest Archangel it’s gone to his head.  
  
Uriel is unrecognizable. Aziraphale had said once that he had heard she had changed after the War in Heaven, that all the joy had gone out of her and she had been different, before. He’d only ever seen her businesslike and in her official capacity, so he wouldn’t know.  
  
Crowley did, though, and he could see that the sister he had loved had died a long time ago, and there was no getting her back.  
  
And with that thought, not entirely sure that just the fact that his soul was crammed into a Principality’s vessel would save it from hellfire, he stepped into the flames.  
  
  
_**_  
  
  
Later, at the Ritz, he opens his eyes, metaphorically, and sees the love around him again. He has it, now, and damn if they’re going to take it from him.  
  
Maybe he can start looking forward, instead of looking back.  
  
He rather likes the idea.

**Author's Note:**

> [1] These would have been Michael, Sandalphon, and Aziraphale, among others.
> 
> [2] Uriel gave the common loon four separate calls, in case God disliked the first one. She had always been the type to overprepare.
> 
> [3] It is by and large frowned upon for angels to curse. It is more accepted of the lesser angels, as they are expected to be less perfect- although still quite perfect- than the higher angels. The Archangels, however, are largely forbidden from cursing more by social taboos than by Her, because if the fledglings saw an Archangel curse they would never be completely cured of it. The-Creature-Formerly-Known-As-Raphael, at this point, has decided to give up on social norms, which is quite understandable when you’ve recently experienced something not dissimilar to having your soul carved out with a potato peeler. Potato peelers would not be invented for another several millennia, but the feeling of clipping your hand with one existed long before.
> 
> [4] Gabriel is, technically, the patron angel of communication in all forms, diplomats, and of stamp collectors. It is his misfortune that She gave him a form that was reasonably attractive and blends in well, and he wastes it by giving most humans the urge to punch him in the face within the first hundred seconds of meeting him.
> 
> Kudos and comments are dearly appreciated :)
> 
> (I did consider an add-on to the end where Uriel and Crowley have a final confrontation, but I liked the happier ending with Aziraphale. I could probably toss the Uriel bonus scene together if there's enough interest.)


End file.
